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The Legacy of the Fathers 



Baccalaureate Address 



OF 



PRESIDENT HOWARD EDWARDS 



OF THE 



Rhode Island State Collejile 




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THE LEGACY OF THE FATHERS 



"And the cliief captain answered, 
With a great sum obtained I this free- 
dom. And Paul said, But I was born 
free." Acts XXII, 28. 

Thus spoke two men concerning the 
freedom of citizenship under the Ro- 
man empire. The soldier, to indicate 
the value that he placed upon it, em- 
phasizes the greatness of the sum that 
he paid for it; the apostle, prizing the 
privilege none the less, glories in the 
greater claim that his fathers were 
also free and that the precious boon 
came to him by inheritance. He was 
born free. Such is the attitude toward 
Roman citizenship of men at the two 
extremes of mental outlook and en- 
vironment, the one by profession a sol- 
dier, the other an apostle of Christian 
righteousness. Now the freedom which 
these two men so highly valued was 
that of the Roman empire, such free- 
dom from personal harm as might sur- 
vive under the absolutism of an Au- 
gustus or Tiberius Caesar, a Caligula, 
a Claudius, or a Nero, to whose cruel- 
ty and luxurious lust Paul later owed 
the loss of his life. There is no com- 
parison between tlie freedom of even 
the noblest Roman of Paul's day and 
that of the humblest human being in 
this American Republic of ours. The 
question that for many montlis has 
been knocking upon the door of my 
mind and calling more and more insist- 
ently for a reply is, Do our young peo- 
ple, especially in our colleges, begin to 
realize the preciousness of American 
citizenship ? Do they stand ready, if 
necessary, to guard it with their lives? 

THE PRICE OF OUR FREEDOM 
For this freedom of ours did not come 
by chance, and will not be perpetuated 
by nerveless sentimentalism and care- 
less short-sightedness. Our fathers 
bought this freedom with a great price. 
They bought it at Bunker Hill, at Val- 
ley Forge, at Bennington and at York- 
town. They paid the price of four 
years of civil war that "this nation, 
under God," might "have a new birth 
of freedom and that government of the 



people, by the people, and for the peo- 
ple" might "not perish from the earth." 
They have transmitted this freedom so 
purchased, to us, and we can proudly 
boast that we are born free. Shall we 
guard and maintain it? Shall our chil- 
dren also be born free? The answer is 
with you, young men, in the attitude 
you take toward national policies and 
national duties. 

No sane man desires war; no wise 
man but would go very far to avoid its 
unspeakable horrors. We do not need 
to be told of them; they leap at us 
from the pages of every newspaper we 
take up. But likewise no sane man 
does not recognize that great powers of 
evil are still abroad in the world and 
that they are restrained and can be 
controlled only by physical force. In- 
side the nation we call this control the 
police force of city or of state. Out- 
side, between nations, there exists no 
police force, and every nation must 
guard its own existence and keep its 
own honor by preparedness of its own 
force, just as the man of earlier days, 
before efficient police control, taught 
first of all his own hands to protect 
his head. It is idle and worse, not to 
face the facts of the world in which we 
live, because we long for and labor for 
the conditions of an ideal world which 
does not exist, and the one ugly fact 
that we cannot ignore is that right- 
eousness cannot afl'ord to allow un- 
righteousness to control and exercise 
the physical forces of nature and of 
man. 

THE JINGO DANGER— WHERE ? 

I find it, therefore, exceedingly dis- 
turbing and alarming to read from a 
leader of opinion, for instance, that 
"force never settled anything." Then 
our Revolutionary War, which settled 
the independent status of this nation, 
and our Civil War, which settled the 
question of slavery and welded the con- 
federation of states into a Union, were 
dreadful orgies of crime, accompliS'hing 
nothing. 

Again I read, "In many of our uni- 
versities large numbers of students 
have sent many letters and petitions to 



President Wilson urging the govern- 
ment at Washington not to allow" — 
what? The inconceivable barbarities of 
Belgian invasion? The drowning of 
new hundreds of innocent women and 
children? No, no; alas! no. Their 
petition is simply "not to allow the 
country to be dragged into war." 

I have received lengthy warnings 
about "militaristic jingoism" in this 
country. Men have written me to pro- 
test against the military drill required 
by law in our colleges, and rarely car- 
ried on voluntarily. No doubt you have 
seen, as I have, severe strictures upon 
the organization of the boy scouts. 
Really, I am at a loss to know what it 
all means, except that I fear that it 
means disaster and shame to my coun- 
try under present world conditions. 
Where is this dreaded jingo spirit? 
How does it express itself? The na- 
tional army uses every inducement, yet 
is not able to keep itself recruited up 
anywhere near its exceedingly modest 
legal limit; the navy is largely under- 
manned and, in the recent manoeuvres, 
showed itself both lacking in necessary 
units and unable to prevent the landing 
of any respectable force upon our 
shores. There is not a state in the 
Union whose volunteer forces are equal 
in numbers or training to the demands 
that riot and insurrection have at 
times made upon them. Our powder 
works have until recently fairly gone 
into hysterics over "farming with 
dynamite" in order to furnish a market 
for their product. With thirty-five 
years' experience in military schools, no 
one knows better than I how difficult 
it is to keep up any sort of interest 
and discipline in the military drill. 
Where does this dreaded jingo militar- 
ism have its local habitation? Really, I 
can only explain the anti-militarism of 
some of our people by assuming that 
they are trying to exorcise militari.sm 
from Germany by disbanding the police 
force in Providence. They are subdu- 
ing castles in Spain by tilting against 
windmills — in New England. They 
would cause their own children to take 
a bath every time they see a street 
gamin with a dirty face. 



THE REAL DANGER. 

If this were all, it might be passed 
over with a smile, but it is far from be- 
ing all. The first duty which every na- 
tion owes its people is protection 
against outside attack, and for this 
protection the nation must rely upon 
the training, the valor, the willingness 
to make necessary sacrifices that have 
been bred into its men. Our pacificists 
are weakening the very foundations of 
national safety, by teaching our men 
to eschew and despise the means of de- 
fense. They call us to peace! peace! 
when there is no peace, when the 
whole earth is filled with tumult and 
violence. They talk of a million men, 
in case of a call for defence, rushing to 
arms in twentj'-four hours. Where are 
the arms tliey would rush to? Where 
the ammunition, where the trained 
leadership? Where the commissariat? 
Wliere the hospital corps? What they 
are really asking is that a mere mob 
futilely off'er itself for sacrifice, and 
that an organized government should 
never be forgiven for asking. 

Optimism is an excellent philosophy 
— the right and indeed tlie only proper 
kind of philosophy. But to refuse to 
face facts because they are unpleasant 
or undesired, to wave aside as phan- 
toms things that are real and tangi- 
ble, is not optimism, but rather either 
folly or cov/ardice. I too am an opti- 
mist. I hope that my house will not 
bum; and, indeed, being a careful man, 
I really believe that it will not burn. 
Nevertheless, seeing that the houses of 
others equally careful have burned and 
do burn, I insure my house. So I hope 
that we may not be involved in war. I 
cannot say, at the present time, that I 
do not believe we shall be so involved; 
but, be that as it may, I know that 
others equally undesirous of war and 
equally innocent of any offence have 
been visited with fire and sword and 
barbarities unutterable. I know that 
the one gre.at nation of Central Europe 
whose lands have not been ravaged, 
whose women and children have not 
been ravished and tortured is the one 
and only nation that was thoroughly 
prepared for war. I know that, at this 



very time, this nation of ours, con- 
scientiously seeking to perform all its 
duties as a neutral to all the warring 
nations, has been deliberately attacked 
in the exercise of its primal rights; its 
property has been wantonly destroyed 
and the innocent lives of more than a 
hundred of American men, women and 
children have been taken. I know that, 
from the very beginning of this war, 
the doctrine of "frightfulness" has 
been deliberately adopted, and utter 
disregard of all convention or law, 
human or divine, has been consistently 
shown. The fire is all around our 
house; shall we not insure now, before 
it is too late? 

THE NON-ARMAMENT PROPAGANDA. 

Under the conditions now existing, it 
is difficult to speak of the propagand- 
ists of non-armament, of restricted 
armament or of disarmament, with due 
moderation. With an armed and mu- 
tinous crew in tliis world-ship of ours, 
it is simply madness to insist that the 
officers throw their revolvers over- 
board. When insurrection is raging in 
a city, and murderous mobs are burn- 
ing its houses, and pillaging its treas- 
ures, we do not insist on disbanding 
the police; on the contrary, we call on 
the Governor to send armed troops, and 
woe be unto us if he does not have 
them to send. 

Among these apostles of peace and 
disarmament are some of the noblest 
people this country has produced. In 
the list I find the names of intimate 
friends, some of the finest characters I 
have ever known, yet in denouncing 
their propaganda at this time, I am 
profoundly convinced that I am doing 
God and my country whatever service 
in me lies. The time may come, and I 
pray God it may come soon, when the 
civilized world can organize peace and 
control the earth with a federal police 
system; but that time is not now, and 
it can never come as long as a single 
powerful nation is animated by the 
doctrines of a Bismarck, a Moltke, and 
a Treitsehke, and is dominated by the 
mediaeval brain of a HohenzoUeren or 
a HaT)sburg. 



OUR DUTY UNDER A PEACE LEAGUE 
Meanwhile, for any single nation to 
attempt disarmament or to refuse ade- 
quately to arm itself, is to invite dis- 
honor, disgrace and disaster. Why not 
face the facts fairly and fully? With 
the present feeling in Germany, does 
any man doubt that the one thing 
standing between us and attack from 
GeiTiiany is, not the rectitude of our in- 
tentions nor the unpreparedness of our 
army and navy; it is simply the navy 
of England and the army of the Allies. 
I repeat it; if we do not have war with 
Germany, it will be simply because the 
warring of the Allies prevents Germany 
at this time from undertaking it. Does 
it not seem unmanly, un-American, de- 
spicable, to hug to ourselves the delu- 
sion of superior virtue in not preparing 
to do for ourselves that which we, with 
no single word of gratitude, receive 
through the blood and agony of men 
whom we condemn for maintaining 
armaments? I will go much farther. 
The advocates of disarmament recog- 
nize that the mere casting away of 
arms will not suffice to keep peace on 
the earth, that somewhere there must 
be a force at hand to quell disorder and 
prevent just what has happened in Bel- 
gium and Luxembourg; and their solu- 
tion of the problem, indeed the only 
conceivable one, is that the other na- 
tions should combine to quell by their 
united force the aggression of any re- 
calcitrant nation. Now it must be clear 
that this plan or any plan like it de- 
mands two things — first, the clear de- 
termination of the fact of aggression; 
second, in every nation a sense of re- 
sponsibility for the crushing of aggres- 
sion and a readiness, in the fulfilment 
of that responsibility, to take up arms 
for suppressing and punishing aggres- 
sion. 

The case of Belgium is a case in 
every way adapted to test the sincer- 
ity and logic of the disarmament ad- 
vocate. It is made to order, so to 
speak. Never can we hope for the 
clearer establishment of the fact of un- 
provoked aggression. Not only does 
the court of the world's opinion con- 
vict Germany of it, but she herself 



through her highest official admits it. 
What, then, about national sense of re- 
sponsibility to suppress the aggression, 
and willingness to take up arms to 
meet the duty? Has the disarmament 
propagandist been urging us to take up 
the cause of Belgium? Has he been 
heard to insist that navy and army be 
modernized and strengthened so that 
we might do our fair share in sup- 
pressing this supremely wanton law- 
lessness? Does the ease or difficulty of 
the task in any way affect, in his eyes, 
the imperativeness of the duty? It is 
despicable in the sheriff to carry out 
the sentence of the law on a poor 
wretch without arms and without 
friends but to let the rich and power- 
ful offender go free; and worse than 
tliat, such a course renders the law it- 
self contemptible and the sheriff's office 
a farce. If the cry of Belgium did 
not awaken in the pacificist the sense 
of responsibility, it is idle to expect 
that any future similar contingency 
would call forth unselfish action in men 
and in nations, whether bound in a gen- 
eral compact or not. 

ENGLAND'S ACTION 

But there was one nation that did 
hear the cry of Belgium and is now 
battling for her redemption. Wliatever 
may be said of England in the past, and 
there is much in her past to condemn, 
to me she is glorified today by the 
purity of her cause, the clearness of her 
vision, the greatness of her sacrifices, 
the steadfastness of her purpose, and 
the loyalty of her heart. I do not 
mean for a moment to imply that Eng- 
land was entirely altruistic in going 
to war. But I do mean that none of 
the causes leading to her decision was 
unworthy or sordid, and that the one 
cause winch united the nation and de- 
cisively turned the scale for war was 
Belgium's wrongs. I make no apology 
for this digression. It is simply the 
tribute due to a noble deed nobly done. 

THE FATHERS' LEGACY. 

Our fathers gave to us a legacy, not 
only of a united nationality, but also 
of a broad and teeming land, and a 
theory of organized government. Of 



these last two I do not deem the latter 
less valuble than the former. 

It is a wonderful land — this broad 
belt of plain and prairie, of mountain 
and table-land, extending from Atlantic 
to Pacific, a land far surpassing the 
fabled wealth of Ormus and of Ind, a 
land of a hundred million of busy peo- 
ple, of great cities and smiling country- 
side, a glorious land of peace and plenty, 
of unity and concord, of liberty, oppor- 
tunity and intelligence. Yet beyond all 
this is a heritage of institutions, tradi- 
tions, human ideals far more wonderful 
and precious. The best material things 
of life— the air, the sunshine, the rain, 
the blue sky and the green earth — come 
to us so abundantly and so naturally 
that Ave scarcely think of them as bless- 
ings at all. Nay, we frequently grow ir- 
ritated at their monotony of abundance, 
and restlessly seek for change even at 
the expense of comfort. So it seems to 
me that we frequently comport our- 
selves toward our institutions and tradi- 
tions, taking them as a matter of 
course and failing to give thanks; and 
sometimes, alas! even doing our utmost, 
through indifference or greed, or lust of 
power, or fear and cowardice, to destroy 
them. Only recently I read from a re- 
sponsible source, with much other ma- 
terial of the same kind, that it is far 
from being established that republican 
government is the ultimate form for in- 
suring the welfare of society and pre- 
serving the covenant ark of civilization. 

Now I do not know what is in the 
womb of time, but I do know that at 
present there are but two essential forms 
of government, the one autocratic, 
claiming its power from above or from 
conquest, and holding its will supreme, 
and the other popular, holding its power 
as delegated from the people, and 
pledged to hear and heed the mandates 
of public opinion. It matters not what 
names and disguises a government may 
take, the essential fact is the acknowl- 
edged origin and source of power. Eng- 
land, for instance, has a king, but under 
the transparent veil of royalty and aris- 
tocracy, the government is that of the 
commons — representatives of the people 
duly chosen. In fact, theoretically and 
legally, the commons are the people and 



are all-powerful. On the other hand, 
Mexico, under the form of a republic 
wlien it had a government, was really an 
autocracy pure and simple. 

AUTOCRATIC GERMANY 
Germany is an autocracy. Its Em- 
peror says so, and there is no word of 
denial from the German people. "We 
Hohenzollerns." said he, "take our crown 
from God alone, and to God alone we are 
responsible in the fulfillment of duty." 
* * * "Only one is master of this 
country. That is I. Wlio oppose me I 
shall crush to pieces." Says Bismarck: 
"With us, there is no sovereign will but 
that of the king. It is he alone who 
wills, because he alone has the right to 
do so." In a state so ruled it is obvious 
that a free press and a free tribunate 
cannot exist, and so we find in the first 
fourteen j-ears of William the Second's 
reign sis thousand prosecutions for lese 
majeste, an ofi'enco the exact limits of 
which no one knows, we find a police 
force from wliose arbitrary control there 
is for the people practically no appeal; 
we find an army whose sole head is the 
Emperor, and whose youngest lieutenant 
takes social precedence of the wisest 
philosopher or mere scientist; we find a 
revolution in the atmosphere of educa- 
tion and among the university men there 
are now the "most loud-voiced jingos, the 
blind admirers of unscrupulous success." 
Along that line today is the surest road 
to preferment. Where the whole pyra- 
mid of society thus stands on its apex, 
it is not surprising to find the sober and 
veracious Munsterburg telling us that 
"In the German view the state is not for 
the individuals, but the individuals for 
the state." 

A GENUINE DEMOCRACY 

The United States, on the other hand, 
has the popular form of government. Our 
fathers gave it to us. They placed the 
pyramid upon its base. They taught us 
that power originates among the people 
governed, and that the governing officials 
appointed by the people are the servants 
of the people. They arranged a govern- 
ment of checks and balances so designed 
that no official might be able to usurp 
dangerous power unto himself. We have 
an untrammeled press, local self-govern- 



ment, an independent judiciary, and full 
and free opportunity for each citizen to 
develop his own individuality and initia- 
tive. With us the state exists for the 
people. 

There are those among us who are in- 
clined to smile at the resounding phrases 
of the Declaration of Independence, who 
look with suspicion upon the qualifica- 
tions of the people to rule themselves and 
view with complacency the growing so- 
cial stratification in our country. But, 
nevertheless, there is none among us 
who does not feel deep down in his soul 
that somewhere in those stately periods 
there lies a truth inestimably precious to 
mankind, the secret of humanity's prog- 
ress, and the key to human destiny. It 
assures us of equality in delegating 
power to our servants in office, equality 
of privilege, responsibility and treatment 
before the law, equality of opportunity 
for self-development, equality of burdens 
and duties toward society, and equality 
of reward for whatever of success is 
achieved. The only inequality it per- 
mits is the inequality of that phrase of 
divine wisdom: "He that is greatest 
among you shall be your servant." 

And in the main this attitude of ser- 
vice has been largely characteristic of 
our rulers; for the man who is daily 
compelled to recognize that his power 
is that of his office and not of himself, 
that it is delegated to him only for a 
certain time and for a definite purpose, 
cannot and will not so far mistake the 
situation as t^ assume to dispense as 
benignant favors to his subjects the 
duties that he owes to his fellow-citi- 
zens. 

Here, then, are the two ideals of gov- 
ernment. In one, the individual exists 
for the state, which is incarnated in the 
glory and power of a Hohenzollern 
dynasty; in the other the state exists 
for the welfare of the individual, 
which means for the highest develop- 
ment and happiness of all the people. 
Which is better, autocracy or democ- 
racy? Which is more effective for the 
welfare of mankind? My own convic- 
tion is that popular government with 
all its faults — its inefficiency, its lost 
motion, its costliness, its failures — is 



infinitely preferable to even the auto- 
cratic efficiency of Germany. For a cen- 
tury and a quarter we have tried this 
"mob government," as Bismarck called 
it, and I confidently maintain that, 
measured in terms of human happiness 
a-^d advancement, no autocracy of 
either the past or the present can be- 
gin to show equal results through an 
equal period of time. 

AUTOCRACY INCOMPETENT. 
Autocracy requires an autocrat — a 
man, or a dynasty, or a coterie that 
somehow is assumed as peculiarly fitted 
to rule. Now the one uniform teaching 
of history is that there is no dynasty 
or arbitrarily limited or designated 
class of men that is pre-eminently 
fitted for the profession or trade of 
governing. No class of men ever ex- 
isted wise enough and morally strong 
enough to be permanently trusted to 
legislate for other and different classes, 
however poor and degraded. History 
consists of a dreary succession of_ fail- 
ures in government, and these failures 
are the failures of monarchism. 

\Vliy, look you, we have today the 
most gigantic collapse of civilization 
the world has ever seen. Somebody has 
failed and failed horribly in his func- 
tion of governing. Who is it? Haps- 
burg Francis Joseph, to celebrate the 
fiftieth anniversary of his reign in Aus- 
tria-Hungary, seizes Bosnia and Her- 
zegovina. The Serbian race bitterly re- 
sents this action; a plot is formed and 
the crown prince, Hapsburg Francis 
Ferdinand, is assassinated. Meanwhile 
in Germany the pride and insolence of 
Hohen^ollern William have grown until 
he measures himself only with God. 
For forty years the whole nation has 
obediently passed its daily life under 
the discipline of martial law and the 
military camp, and has been made mad 
with preachments about the German 
super-man, pan-Germanism, and Macht- 
politik. The nation, the army, the 
navy, the airships, the submarines, all 
are ready for the glorious adventure of 
world- dictatorship. The slogan had long 
before been announced in the, Emperor's 
words, "Nothing must be done any- 
where on the globe without the sanc- 



tion of Germany's ruler." The assassi- 
nation of one of the Lord's inchoate 
anointed is too opportune an occasion 
to be lost. Hohenzollern and Hapsburg 
put their heads together. Forthwith, an 
impossible forty-eight-hour ultimatum 
goes to Serbia — forty-eight hours, when 
it took President Wilson's cabinet ten 
days merely to perfect the phrasing of 
a note simply reiterating what had 
been said in a previous communication! 
Nations stood aghast at the impending 
chaos. They pleaded for time even to 
think. But no, for absolutism "the 
day" had come, the hour of triumph 
had struck. Europe resounds with the 
tread of marching columns, the horrors 
of Belgian invasion are upon us. For 
the death of one princeling millions of 
innocent men must die, womanhood 
must be outraged, and childhood tor- 
tured, burned, shot and drowned. The 
cause of civilization must be set back 
a hundred years, an unborn world must 
groan under the burden of a colossal 
debt, and even so the end is not yet. 

This, young men, is not merely a 
gigantic failure of absolutist govern- 
ment; it is deliberate treason against 
the human race. Popular government 
or misgovernment has nothing parallel 
to offer. Anarchy itself can only feebly 
rival the horrors of this debacle. 

And this, although the most stupen- 
dous, is far from being an isolated ex- 
ample of autocracy's crass incom- 
petence to fulfill its metier of govern- 
ing. Wars are symptomatic. They 
mean always inefficiency or folly or 
criminality in government somewhere. 
Take away from human history the 
dynastic wars and the wars of mis- 
giiided ambition, and how many would 
be left? The whole history of the 
Hapsburgs is a history of dynastic 
wars in which the interests of those 
governed are sacrificed to the fury of 
efforts to obtain and maintain crowns 
for the sprigs of a family exceedingly 
commonplace in character and attain- 
ments. The autocracy of George IH 
cost England her American colonies. 
That of the Louises of France plunged 
her people into the excesses of the 
French Revolution. The autocracy of 



Xapoleon deluged Europe in blood. The 
nascent autocracy of Southern slave- 
holders forced on America her civil war. 
And the record is the same every- 
where; whenever and wherever a few 
have obtained firm and exclusive hold 
upon the reins of power, no matter un- 
der what disguise of form, there al- 
ways we find disastrous failure in the 
functioning of government itself. 

autocracy's ambition 
German apologists for this war •will 
tell us that the present German terri- 
tory is not large enough for the enor- 
mous increase of its people in num- 
bers, that it lies in Central Europe, 
threatened on all sides by other na- 
tions, that all the earth is practically 
taken up, that the German race is a 
race of super-men whose Kultur (effi- 
ciency) will be lost to the world unless 
the nation can find room to develop, 
that this war was sooner or later in- 
evitable — in order, of course, to dis- 
possess some other nation or nations 
and to allow this new-born giant 
among nations to take his "place in 
the Sim." 

So far as the "threatening ring of 
iron" is concerned, the state of unpre- 
paredness in England and Russia, and 
to a considerable degree in France, 
(well kno^^^l, be it said, to the Ger- 
mans), clearly disproves any existing 
danger to Germany. The threatening 
danger was evidently in the reversed 
direction; viz., from Germany to her 
neighbors. Again, as to the country 
being too small for the increase of its 
population, the contention ignores the 
fact that no single part of the earth is 
closed to the German man and woman. 
Asia, Africa, Australia, America, 
North and South, all are absolutely 
open to him, provided only he does not 
come as an armed band to dispossess 
those already here. Millions of them have 
been welcomed here and have found 
home, happiness and fortune among 
us. Their welfare does not demand en- 
largement of Hohenzollorn dominion. 
They are not pining for the efficiency 
of the German army service, for the 
suppression of the right of free ex- 
pression, for three hundred trials per 



year for lese majeste. There is room 
here for millions more, and all that we 
shall ask in return for giving them the 
heartiest welcome and exactly equal 
privileges Avith ourselves is that they 
will leave the Kaiser and Kaiserism at 
home behind them. 

When, therefore, we hear about com- 
pression and the consequent inevitabil- 
ity of a war for expansion, we ask, 
expansion of what? and the only logi- 
cal answer is, the expansion of an im- 
perial government, of the glory of a 
dynasty, of the range of one man's am- 
bition. "The people exist for the state 
and the state is I, William Hohenzol- 
lern." 

THE IMMEDIATE DANGER 

It is this ruthless spirit of Macht- 
politik, the right of might, that the 
Allies are warring against today. It 
is this spirit that has unified against 
Germany the solid opinion of all far- 
seeing Americans who value the 
heritage their fathers bought with un- 
flinching courage on the battlefield. 
Think of it! It is the spirit that laid 
waste the cathedrals of innocent Bel- 
gium and extorted heavy indemnities 
from her starving people, that in order 
to simply terrorize drowned the inno- 
cent children on a Lusitania — it is this 
spirit that Mr. Bryan would meet with 
a year of senile discussion and a power- 
less Hague Convention at the end. It 
is this spirit that the pacifists are aid- 
ing and abetting with their non-arma- 
ment propaganda among our school- 
children and our college boys! How 
the powers of Hell must rejoice over 
the blindness of good and honest men! 

Do we say to ourselves in the face 
of this spirit, "A thousand shall fall at 
our side and ten thousand at our right 
hand, but it shall not come nigh us?" 
Why? Is not England its greatest foe, 
and are not our fields and factories 
England's one source of supply? Has 
not Germany used every means short 
of physical attack to have us place an 
embargo on shipments of ammunition 
and supplies? Is it not openly com- 
plained that, by stopping supplies, we 
could end the war in three weeks? I 
cannot for a moment believe that, at 



Germany's ibehest, we will cravenly 
break a fundamental requirement of 
neutrality, basely betray the Allies into 
the hands of their enemies, and by 
closing our markets, not merely end 
the war, but decide it, and in favor of 
Germany. In the effort, therefore, to 
preserve our honor and good faith, we 
are incurring the bitter anger of Ber- 
lin; and haughty Berlin's anger means 
war, unless under the stress of present 
conditions on her battle lines she shall 
find her advantage in temporizing with 
us and speaking us fair. 

There are not wanting other occa- 
sions for German antagonism. Our 
Monroe Doctrine is one of the foremost. 
Bismarck called it "a species of arro- 
gance peculiarly American and entire- 
ly inexcusable." There is no doubt in 
my mind that Germany will one day 
call upon us to repudiate it or to take 
measures, in concurrence with the 
South American nations, to defend it. 
Germany fiercely resented our taking 
the Philippines over. Dewey tells us 
that, seventeen years ago in the block- 
ade of Manila, the Germans assembled 
in the bay a stronger fleet than his 
own; that Von Diederich and his offi- 
cers were discourteous and offensive to 
the last degree; and that, finally, a 
cruiser deliberately landed provisions. 
Then, just as Wilson is doing today, 
the American Admiral submitted an ul- 
timatum. He sent his flag-lieutenant 
to Von Diederich with his compliments 
and the message that, if he wanted a 
fight, he could have it right now. The 
action of landing provisions was 
promptly disavowed and not repeated. 
Even then, however, in the final action 
to take Manila, Von Diederich moved 
his ships into a threatening position 
against Dewey. Then occurred a sig- 
nificant thing. The British senior cap- 
tain Chichester ranged his British ships 
between those of Von Diederich and 
Dewey's fleet. There is more, but I 
have not time to tell it now. And yet 
the poseur Bryan talks about our 
"memories of an historic friendship 
with Germany!" 

THE CONCLUSION 

What does it all mean? It means 



the same old story of autocratic in- 
efliciency and unwisdom in government. 
It means the inevitable antagonism of 
Divine-right dynasties toward govern- 
ment from and of the people. It 
means the need of wise organization 
like that of the Swiss to meet an at- 
tack that will some day surely come. 
It means that the realities of life are 
stern and harsh, and that duty must 
be met, not by Utopian dreams of ease 
and happiness, but by courage and wis- 
dom, steadiness of purpose and sacri- 
fice even unto death. 

Other than the direct relation of hu- 
manity with the Divine, I know of 
nothing more sacred than true patriot- 
ism. And so, on this quiet Sunday 
afternoon, as I stand before you for 
the last time as instructor and guide, I 
have thought it best under the condi- 
tions that face us once again to dis- 
cuss with you your country's needs. You 
have been trained as scientists and work- 
ers. You have also learned the privileges 
and duties of citizenship. You go out 
tomorrow from our halls into the ser- 
vice of the Republic. As you pass out 
with the stamp of approval from your 
college, let her last word to you be a 
clarion summons to wisdom, loyalty 
and "the last full measure of devotion" 
to your country. 

"You whom the fathers made free and 
defended 
Stain not the scroll that emblazons 
their fame; 
You whose fair heritage spotless de- 
scended 
Leave not your children a birthright of 
shame"! 

—Holmes. 



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